On Monday, U.S. Magistrate Frank Maas imposed civil penalties and said the money would be paid to 110 survivors and the estates of 47 victims.

A plaintiff’s legal team said it may seek the seizure of Iranian assets in order to pay the families.

In December of 2011, a federal district court in Manhattan ruled that Iran and Hezbollah materially and directly supported al-Qaeda in the attacks.

“The families have waited a very long time for this day and they have been through a lot. So I was greatly relieved that the families received an answer to the question that they asked me ten years ago: they asked who was the responsible party? How did this happen? Today a federal court judge has said that a principal responsible party is the Islamic Republic of Iran,” said Thomas E. Mellon, Jr. of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, law firm of Mellon Webster & Shelly, the lead attorney in the case.

Attorneys based their case on conclusions made by the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation “regarding an apparent link between Iran, Hezbollah, and the 9/11 hijackers, following the Commission’s own eleventh-hour discovery of significant National Security Agency intercepts,” according to the Havlish, et al vs. Osama Bin Laden, Iran, et al website.

Although the Commission claims al-Qaeda operatives passed through Iran and officials did not stamp their passports, it also admits (in Chapter 7) that Iran did not have knowledge of the supposed 9/11 plot. Moreover, the families of alleged hijackers Ahmed Alnami and Wail and Waleed Alshehri have denied they traveled to Iran on their way to training camps in Afghanistan.